Ishi: America's Last Known Hunter-Gatherer

by Patrick Baker

Imagine being the last of your kind and entering a world that is nothing like the world your grandparents knew. What if you could no longer live in the homeland that had sustained your ancestors for centuries? This is exactly what happened nearly a century ago for a Native American man known to the modern world as "Ishi."

Ishi ("man" in his native Yana language) was believed to be the last of the Yahi people, and is believed to be the last Native American to have lived the majority of his life outside of American culture as it existed in 1911. Ishi was the name given to the last known hunter-gatherer in America by Alfred Kroeber, an anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley in 1911.

Ishi shown with anthropologist A.L. Kroeber in 1911¹

Dr. Cordain has been researching Ishi intensely for the past six months, having been first introduced to Ishi by his father at about 11 years of age. Dr. Cordain stated that "I now believe I have an answer to Ishi's final two to three years of existence" in his ancestral home on Deer Creek, located east of present day Los Molinos, California - before his appearance in October, 1911 at a slaughter house in Oroville, California.

Kroeber stumbled into Ishi's life following his "death walk" from his hunter-gatherer home on Deer Creek to the slaughter house near Oroville. Kroeber wrote of and exploited this Native American's life and culture before Ishi’s death in 1916 from tuberculosis.

Cordain states that "sleuthing via Google Earth and the early records of Dr. Kroeber in the academic literature has given me insight into the exact location of his final 'village' of residence, and how he spent the last two to three years of his life with his paralyzed mother at another location on Deer Creek." Historically, this site was known only to the long-dead Kroeber and his colleagues. Cordain states that "modern anthropologic and forensic examination of this site would help to clarify and demystify the legend of Ishi."

Dr. Cordain believes that eventual carbon dating of this site - once verified and reexamined - will reveal the missing two to three years of Ishi’s life before he became known to the world of 20th century America. Cordain has compiled his information and will contact the appropriate members of the California Anthropological community before deciding how to proceed.

Cordain’s research and writings indicate that a contemporary diet that precisely mimics hunter-gatherer diets is "obviously impossible, as most of us don’t have unlimited access to wild game and plant foods." However, Cordain’s studies indicate that "our health, well being and mental state improve, and we can emulate Ishi's personality, psychological state and health" by consuming fresh fruits, vegetables, lean meats and seafood, as documented in his book The Paleo Diet. Dr. Cordain’s dietary recommendations in The Paleo Diet include avoiding processed foods, grains, refined sugars, refined vegetable oils, and salted foods.

Dr. Cordain goes on to say that "Ishi's story is heart-wrenching, sad, warm, but human above all else. His spirit, optimism and love of life - despite the awful events which sealed his fate - represent a truly remarkable and final tale" of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as it was once practiced by Native Americans and other indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, much of Ishi's life will remain undocumented and unknown, and, according to Dr. Cordain, "the available historical, archaeological and forensic evidence about his final days on Deer Creek as America’s last known hunter-gatherer are vaguely understood and highly speculative."

For many of our readers, the story of Ishi may be unknown, and lost in the fog of a long forgotten history our great-grandparents knew - particularly those among us who lived with Native American inhabitants of this continent, after the American population of European descent had settled in the American West.

References:

1. Heizer, Robert F. (Editor), Kroeber, Theodora (Editor). Ishi the Last Yahi: A Documentary History. University of California Press, 1981.
2. Kroeber, Theodora. Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America. Deluxe Edition. University of California Press, 2004.
3. Starn, Orin. Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last "Wild" Indian. W.W. Norton & Co., 2005.
4. DVD Documentary. The Last Yahi (2002). Linda Hunt (Vocals), Jed Riffe (Director), Pamela Roberts (Director)

Dr. Cordain Comments on New Evidence of Early Human Grain Consumption

Dear Readers,

Dr. Cordain was recently asked by a reporter from the journal Nature to comment on an article entitled "Mozambican Grass Seed Consumption During the Middle Stone Age" by Julio Mercader in the journal Science, citing evidence that humans consumed grain much earlier than was previously thought. In addition, one of our readers asked Dr. Cordain to comment on an article in Scientific American entitled "Humans feasting on grains for at least 100,000 years," by Katherine Harmon.

Dear Dr. Cordain,

I am a huge fan of your books and have been eating a paleo diet for years. I've had your graph of the land/water meat/fish, and fruit, nut, seed % breakdown taped to my fridge for years, although I'm so familiar with it that i no longer need to look at it for reference.

The Paleo Diet is predicated upon the fact that humans did not have grain cultivation and consumption until 5,000-8,000 years ago, which coincides with the advent of 'modern' civilization diseases. Up until now, this hypothesis have not been challenged as the archival evidence of grain agriculture matches it.

However, the current issue of Scientific American has an article stating archaeological evidence that humans were eating lots of grains 100,000 years ago.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=humans-feasting-on-grains-for-at-le-2009-12-17

I am most curious about your opinion about this and how it effects the paleo dietary theory.

Thanks!

Dr. Cordain's response:

This is an interesting paper ( Mercader J. Mozambican grass seed consumption during the middle stone age. Science 2009;326:1680-83) as it may push probable (but clearly not definite) cereal grain consumption by hominins back to at least 105,000 years ago. Prior to this evidence, the earliest exploitation of wild cereal grains was reported by Piperno and colleagues at Ohalo II in Israel and dating to ~23,500 years ago (Nature 2004;430:670-73). As opposed to the Ohalo II data in which a large saddle stone was discovered with obvious repetitive grinding marks and embedded starch granules attributed to a variety of grains and seeds that were concurrently present with the artifact , the data from Ngalue is less convincing for the use of cereal grains as seasonal food. No associated intact grass seeds have been discovered in the cave at Ngalue, nor were anvil stones with repetitive grinding marks found. Hence, at best, the data suggests sporadic use (and not necessarily consumption) of grains at this early date. Clearly, large scale processing of sorghum for consumption for extended periods seems unlikely.

Further, It should be pointed out that consumption of wild grass seeds of any kind requires extensive technology and processing to yield a digestible and edible food that likely did not exist 105,000 years ago. Harvesting of wild grass seeds without some kind of technology (e.g. sickles and scythes [not present at this time]) is tedious and difficult at best. Additionally, containers of some sort (baskets [not present at this time], pottery [not present] or animal skin containers are needed to collect the tiny grains. Many grain species require flailing to separate the seed from the chaff and then further winnowing ([baskets not present]), or animal skins] to separate the seeds from the chaff. Intact grains are not digestible by humans unless they are first ground into a flour (which breaks down the cell walls), and then cooked (typically in water – e.g. boiling [technology not present]) or parched in a fire which gelatinizes the starch granules, and thereby makes them available for digestion and absorption. Because each and every one of these processing steps requires additional energy on the part of the gatherer, most contemporary hunter gatherers did not exploit grains except as starvation foods because they yielded such little energy relative to the energy obtained (optimal foraging theory).

If indeed the grinder/core axes with telltale starch granules were used to make flour from sorghum seeds, then the flour still had to be cooked to gelatinize the starch granules to make it digestible. In Neolithic peoples, grass seed flour most typically is mixed with water to make a paste (dough) that is then cooked into flat breads. It is highly unlikely that the technology or the behavioral sophistication existed 105,000 years ago to make flat breads. Whole grains can be parched intact in fires, but this process is less effective than making flour into a paste and cooking it to gelatinize the starch granules. Hence, it is difficult to reconcile the chain of events proposed by the authors (appearance of sorghum starch granules on cobbles or grinders = pounding or grinding of sorghum grains = consumption of sorghum). I wouldn’t hang my hat on this evidence indicating grains were necessarily consumed by hominins at this early date. To my mind, the Ohalo II data still represents the best earliest evidence for grain consumption by hominins.

Cordially,
Loren Cordain, Ph.D., Professor